Scott Hahn and the Football Hooligans, Part Deux

OK, so I'm told that the story I had gotten about the Theology on Tap session the other night at Rome's Irish Pub was "highly exaggerated," but still at the same time "thoroughly entertaining."

As I am to please, I'm doubly grateful.

Still, apparently, the word 'round town was what was posted here yesterday -- as if you need a reminder of the cautionary tales which come with the way things spread and take on a life of their own....

In the interest of full disclosure, here's the summary as provided by an e.mailer who was in attendance:

Actually, all those drunken Irish men were in the bar to begin with, and only when the managers cut off sound to the television sets did they begin to get rambunctious. Their first attempts to drown Dr. Hahn out with their yells and jeers failed outright when the manager took the microphone from him to threaten the crowd. The rest of the talk, while suffering the occassional outburst, proceeded as planned and actually ended with a lively exchange between Dr. Hahn and an Irish man in the balcony concerning the theodicy issue. At no time, though, did a mob of drunken Irish men mob the stage and force Hahn to flee from the pub. He actually had plenty of time after his talk to talk with with fans and sign a couple of autographs.

And there you have it. I'm still kinda envious of the scene -- as ToT here is held in the basement of Finnigan's Wake, nothing of the kind would ever happen in Philadelphia.

Pity.

SVILUPPO: One of Amy Welborn's ops was there as well.... Some snips from that account:

We were there - it was NOT the Irish, it was the British football (soccer for us Yankees) fans. There had already been disturbances earlier in the week down at Campo di Fiori by drunken & "celebrating" Brits, riots so bad that the carabineri had been called in (and were whacking indiscriminately any English-speaking people in the crowds - two of our students were whacked as they were trying to get away from the crowds!)....

Before the evening began, we got there early to stake out a few tables and could tell immediately that there might be problems - there were many Brits around, already with a few beers in them (but at that happy go lucky, "let's hit on any females we can", stage) and they were talking soccer. We could foresee that any announcement that the bar was going to shut down the soccer screens so that a "Bible guy" could talk was going to be, shall we say, a bit irritating. That's precisely what happened - About a third of the crowd was Brits, the rest were TOT attendees, and at the beginning of that talk it seemed that there might be a brawl. The Brits were being as loud and obnoxious as possible, screaming obscenities at Dr. Hahn and the rest of us (the mildest being "don't you *** shove your *** religion on us!"). Very quickly though, they realized they were outnumbered. They didn't shut up though until an Irishman (the only Irish disturbance I might add) did something really quite foolish (and which could have worked out very badly indeed), and grabbed the mike from Dr. Hahn, whirled around and basically told the Brits to shove off or there would be a fight... well, bad move as that might have been, that actually seemed to work, as the worst of the malcontents left soon after and Dr. Hahn was basically uninterupted for the rest of his talk....

So - yes, there was a "situation" at TOT on Thursday, but it all worked out well, thanks be to God. Dr. Hahn even wrote in all the books he signed, Romans 8:28. :)

Amen.

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